


240. damaged gods

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [116]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 09:25:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8367025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: “Who are you,” Helena yells down to the woman in the parking lot, floors and floors below. “Why are you still here.”
“You really want me to explain from the parking lot?” the stranger yells back. She seems mostly amused at the question. Helena likes her despite herself.





	

When Helena lifts the edge of her curtain to peek outside, the woman sitting in the parking lot outside her building looks up and makes eye contact. Helena drops the curtain. Her heart is speeding up again, the way it has every time in the last eight hours that she’s lifted the curtain and that woman has _still been there_. Eight hours. She hasn’t moved – well, she has, but only in circles around the parking lot. At maybe 7 or 8pm Helena had peeked outside and the stranger in the leather jacket had been pacing in circles, big wide laps, but she’d looked up and right at Helena anyways. Her eyes are two dark glittering points in the mask of her face. Helena should be scared of her.

Here is the thing: she isn’t.

It’s two minutes to midnight and she’s getting tired and if she’s tired than the woman out there must be tired too. She hasn’t eaten. Helena couldn’t stay _anywhere_ for eight hours without eating. She bites her lip, drums her fingers against each other, considers how stupid this is on the list of all the stupid things she’s done in her life. When she realizes it’s by far the stupidest thing, she goes and opens the curtain all the way. Then she opens the window.

“Who are you,” she yells into the parking lot. “Why are you still here.”

“You really want me to explain from the parking lot?” the stranger yells back. She seems mostly amused at the question. Helena likes her despite herself.

“What is there to explain,” Helena yells. “You are stranger danger. I watch television! I know.”

She sees a twitch on the woman’s face, gambles on it being an eye roll. “You were born on March 15th,” the woman yells back. “You’re a mirror twin. You don’t know your sister. Sometimes you dream about her, but you can’t see her face.”

Helena doesn’t say anything. A flash of white in the face below her: her stranger is grinning, a mouthful of sharp white teeth.

* * *

“This is maybe the seventh time,” she says, hands wrapped gratefully around a chipped mug full of tea. Helena can’t stop staring at her – this woman whose name is Sarah, this woman who has Helena’s face, this woman who knows that Helena has been dreaming about her since the age of four years old.

“I don’t believe you,” Helena says stubbornly. She stirs her own hot chocolate with her finger to watch the clumps of powder wobble around.

Sarah reaches into the pocket of her leather jacket, slaps a packet of photographs on the table. Helena picks up the packet and drops it again. It’s her. Only it isn’t; the photographs are date-stamped, years before she was born. But it’s her. Her face pressed against a face that must be Sarah’s, cheek to cheek. A Helena who isn’t Helena standing on a stage, kissing a man on the cheek, eating an entire ice cream sundae. Endless Helenas flickering by between her hands.

“Reincarnation,” Sarah says. “Seven times. I can tell you about them, if you want.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Helena says.

“You said that last time too,” Sarah says quietly. “You never remember. I’m always the one runnin’ around lookin’ for you. You’ve got the easy job – you just have to forget all of it.” She smiles, lopsided and wry, and takes another sip of tea.

“Why is it happening,” Helena says.

Sarah shrugs a shoulder. “Dunno,” she says. “I like to think we were somethin’ special once, and then we did somethin’ _really_ shitty and now we’re being punished.” She grins that same grin from the parking lot, all sharp edges. Then it drops off her face. “Or maybe we’ve just got shit luck. Like I said, dunno.”

Helena looks at her. She doesn’t know what to ask – _am I ever happy_ or _is this the happiest I’ve ever been_ or _have I died six times_ or _how do you find me_ or _what next, what do we do from here, where do we go from here, how did you know that I’ve been waiting my whole life for you_. So instead she slurps her hot chocolate up, to give her something to do that isn’t asking stupid questions.

When she lowers the mug Sarah is looking at her with something overwhelmingly fond and soft. “God, I missed you,” she says, her whole voice devoid of sharp edges.

Helena doesn’t know what to say to that, and it must show on her face because Sarah lets out an uneasy little laugh and stares into the depths of her mug. “It’s okay,” she says to whatever she can see in Helena’s expression. “You don’t have to lie about it, I know I’m still – still a bloody stranger. It’s fine. We’ve done this before.” She picks at one of the cracks in the mug with her thumbnail. Under the table her leg is hopping.

“No,” Helena says. “I did miss you. I just didn’t know how.” She wants to say: _when I started learning English I would point at things and there wouldn’t be a word for them. And then suddenly there was a word, and cake had been cake the whole time._ She thinks that Sarah would know exactly what she meant, and that makes her want to cry.

Sarah’s hand finds Helena’s hand, palm light on Helena’s knuckles. “I’m here now,” she says. “And you’re here. It’s always alright, once we’re both together.”

“I know,” Helena says. She flips her hand over, and twines her fingers with Sarah. And then, for the first time – or the tenth time, or the hundredth time – she is holding her sister’s hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [364\. aphelion](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8375611) by [piggy09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09)




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